Robin Marty - New Handbook for a Post-Roe America: The Complete Guide to Abortion Legality, Access, and Practical Support

FOR A

introduction by

AMANDA PALMER

Seven Stories Press

New York Oakland London

Copyright 2019, 2021 by Robin Marty
Introduction 2021 by Amanda Palmer

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, writing or recording, or through any other system for the storage or retrieval of information without the written permission of the publisher.

Seven Stories Press
140 Watt Street
New York, NY 10013
www.sevenstories.com

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Marty, Robin, author.

Title: New handbook for a post-Roe America / Robin Marty.

Description: Second edition | New York, NY : Seven Stories Press, [2021] | Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2020055647 (print) | LCCN 2020055648 (ebook) | ISBN 9781644210581 (trade paperback) | ISBN 9781644210598 (ebook)

Subjects: LCSH: Reproductive rights--United States--History. | Abortion--United States--History. | Abortion--Law and legislation--United States--History. | Pro life movement--United States--History. | Pro-choice movement--United States--History. | Social change--United States.

Classification: LCC HQ767 .M385 2021 (print) | LCC HQ767 (ebook) | DDC 362.1988/800973--dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020055647

LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020055648

Contents

Introduction

Hi, my name is Amanda, and for the next few minutes, consider me your friend. Then you can get to the practical parts of the book that you actually need.

Chances are good that if youre opening up this book, you may be pregnant and about to deal with an abortion. Or you have a friend, partner, or family member whos in the thick of it.

Guess what? NobodyI mean nobodyreally wants to talk about this stuff. Nobody really wants to write a book about it, either, or sing about it, or make art about it. Its just too uncomfortable and awkward.

Thats why Robin Marty, the author of this book, deserves extra special credit. She could have written about just about anything else and had an easier life.

Im a singer/songwriter by trade, and Ive had three abortions. Yes. Three.

I had my first abortion at seventeen in Boston; I was a scared kid in my senior year of high school. My second abortion happened in Scotland shortly after getting married in my thirties and finding out that, aside from the fact that the pregnancy was accidental, the fetus wasnt even viable due to an antibiotic Id taken. And my third abortionthe hardest onewas simply by choice a few years later. I got pregnant and had a breakdown-level existential crisis, struggling with confusion, guilt, and ambivalence for weeks, doing things like googling what do Buddhists think about abortion on my phone, hidden under my covers in the middle of the night. I just wanted some time to decide for me. I decided, ultimately, that I wasnt ready. I had an abortion in New York.

The abortions all had one thing in common: they were easy to access, immediately, and they were safe and legal. I was a teenager with well-off, liberal parents, and later, I was a well-off person in countries where I never gave a thought to the legality of abortion, or the expense. I know that is a privilege not available to countless others.

This is a practical handbook about abortion. Its a very directand sadly necessarycollection of tools, facts, resources, and information in an era of American history thats gone very dark in the area of reproductive rights. But Ive always felt there was a second handbook needed when dealing with abortion, the handbook I wished existed so many times in my life, but couldnt find: an emotional handbook. A handbook about how to navigate the feelings.

I spent the majority of 2019 touring the world, playing a piano on a big theater stage every night, right until COVID-19 hit and cancelled everything. During my show, I looked out at tens of thousands of people sitting in the dark as I told the stories of my three abortions, and also the stories of being pregnant and giving birth, and the story of enduring a miscarriage alone in a hotel room. So fun and entertaining! No, actually, the show was really funny. And sad. And healing. One of the songs was titled Voicemail for Jill, which felt less like a song and more like a prayer, and a code that Id cracked after a lifetime of tackling the seemingly impossible task of writing about abortion in a song without clouding it in humor and irony.

In it, I sing:

You dont need to offer the right explanation,

You dont need to beg for redemption or ask for forgiveness.

And you dont need a courtroom inside of your head

Where youre acting as judge and accused and defendant and witness.

One of the biggest difficulties of experiencing an abortion is that you have to deal with several roiling and complicated feelings, in real time.

Theres the way you feel about your abortion, anywhere on the scale from its not a big deal, truly to this is the end of the whole goddamn world. All those spots on the emotional spectrum are valid; youre feeling what youre feeling. But then theres the extra feeling you have to carry about what The World may be feeling about your abortion.

What your parents would think, what the other party involved in the pregnancy would think (or would think if they knew), what your partner thinks (or would think if they knew), what your children would think, what the church would think, what God would think, what Goddess would think, what your dog or cat would think I mean when youre pregnant and heading for an abortion, it gets weird. The entire landscape around you can look like a giant wall of impenetrable judgment. Pretty much everybody has an opinion about abortion. And if youre having one, that probably meansin your anxious headthat everybodys got an opinion about YOU, and your decision. And, you, my friend, do not need that extra burden right now. Not when youre already dealing with an abortion and the logistics and physical pain of the thing itself. It is maddening, it is confusing, and most of all, it is isolating.

Dealing emotionally with an abortion is like trying to walk across a balance beam while carrying a pile of logs in your arms. Blindfolded. You must move forward. Time will not stop for you. But, more often than not, the room is empty, nobody is cheering for your success, nobody is coming to your aid, nobody is offering words of joyful encouragement. Help is not on the way.

That is why I am so glad you are holding this book. This book is help. And this book is here to remind you that you are not alone.

No matter what your situation is, where you are, who you are, or what youre going through, I want to personally reach through the pages, give you a hug, and hold your hand. What youre dealing with may be a very easy decision, or a very fraught and complicated one, but either way, youre living in a culture that is not built to support you, to hold you, to nurture you, and make an abortion a simple, practical, calm, and drama-free process. Even if abortion stays legal in America, we still live in a culture that, for the most part, expects you to deal with your abortion as a clandestine operation, sweeping the event away from your life as if it never happened.

Abortion is a silent and shame-wrapped footnote in the lives of millions and millions of people.

Abortion can be lonely. So incredibly lonely.